FIP (originally France Inter Paris) is a French radio network founded in 1971. It is part of the
Radio France
Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster.
Stations
Radio France offers seven national networks:
*France Inter — Radio France's "generalist" station, featuring entertaining and informative talk mixed with a wide variety of ...
group.
Concept
The concept behind FIP has scarcely changed since its founding:
commercial
Commercial may refer to:
* a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television)
** Radio advertisement
** Television advertisement
* (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...
-free music interrupted only briefly for traffic updates, short news bulletins, and occasional announcements about forthcoming cultural events. Currently, live broadcasts, from Paris, are from 7 am to 11 pm. During off-hours, a computer replays music programming from previous days.
All music programming is hand-picked by a small team of curators, who are each responsible for a three-hour block. They abide by a few rules, most notably paying close attention to how tracks follow each other, across genres and styles, and especially making sure that a song is never played twice in a 48-hour window. FIP broadcasts around 16,000 artists and 44,000 different songs every year; 85% of its programming comes from independent labels.
The short news bulletin at 10 minutes before the hour was conceived so that listeners interested in hearing more details could tune in to
France Inter
France Inter () is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, li ...
(or other stations) at the top of the hour; this was removed in June 2020, citing the saturation of news in the media ecosystem. Likewise, traffic updates, relevant to Paris, had been removed in 2008.
Music broadcasts
The programming features all types of music genres including
chanson
A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic s ...
,
classical,
film music
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...
,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
,
pop rock
Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is a fusion genre with an emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than rock music. Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, earl ...
,
world music and
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
, but with careful attention paid to smooth and unobtrusive transition from one song to the other (for example, the rock and roll song
Roll Over Beethoven
"Roll Over Beethoven" is a 1956 hit song written by Chuck Berry, originally released on Chess Records single, with "Drifting Heart" as the B-side. The lyrics of the song mention rock and roll and the desire for rhythm and blues to replace clas ...
can be preceded by a short sonata of Beethoven). FIP is one of the few stations in the world to transmit this type of programming around the clock. All of the songs are hand-picked by expert programmers. Some famous ones include Patrick Tandin, Julien Delli Fiori and Alexandre Marcellin. The first programmer was Anne Marie Leblond. Currently there are seven programmers: Armand Pirrone, Luc Frelon, Patrick Derlon, Christian Charles, René Hardiagon, Jean-Yves Bonnardel and Alexandre Desurmont.
The station broadcasts presenter-led programs during several evening hours:
* 7pm-8pm: ''Club Jazzafip'' with Jane Villenet (Mon-Thu) and Charlotte Bibring (Fri-Sun)
* 8pm-10pm:
** Monday: ''Sous les jupes de Fip'' with Emilie Blon-Metzinger and Luc Frelon
** Tuesday: ''C'est Magnifip!'' with Frédérique Labussière
** Wednesday: ''Certains l'aiment Fip'' with Susana Poveda
** Thursday: ''Live à Fip'' with Stéphanie Daniel
History
The station was founded on 5 January 1971 at 5 p.m. by the head of radio-télévision Roland Dhordain and two producers from
France Inter
France Inter () is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, li ...
, Jean Garetto and Pierre Codou, both week-end presenters at
France Inter
France Inter () is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, li ...
. It was broadcast from Paris on 514 m (585 kHz)
medium wave
Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...
, hence its original name of France Inter Paris 514. It was noted for its particular style of programming and its hosts' sugary tone of voice as they described traffic problems with humour and irony.
After Paris, the station was emulated in other cities (Lyon, Marseille, and so forth), which broadcast the same music and news with local traffic conditions and events. The P in FIP changed according to the location: FIB, FIL, FIM, and so on. As with Radio France in general, FIP moved to
FM and
stereo
Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...
.
Given its role as a niche player in French
public broadcasting
Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...
, FIP was largely untouched by the changes in the French radio landscape starting in 1981. In 1999
Jean-Marie Cavada
Jean-Marie Cavada (born 24 February 1940 in Épinal, Vosges) is a French politician and former journalist and media executive who last served as a Member of the European Parliament for Ile de France from 2004 until 2019. Since 3 December 2011 he ...
, the president of Radio France launched a restructuring called "Plan Bleu", which reassigned frequencies among local stations, Radio Bleue, Urgences, Le Mouv', and FIP. FIP lost the stations which had smaller audiences: the stations at Metz and Nice became part of the
France Bleu
France Bleu is a network of local and regional radio stations in France, part of the national public broadcasting group Radio France. The network has a public service mission to serve local audiences and provides local news and content from each ...
network. Despite listener protests, the plan was adopted on 24 May 2000.
In September 2017,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
CEO
Jack Dorsey
Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur and programmer who is a co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Inc., as well as a co-founder and the CEO and chairperson of Block, Inc., the developer of the Squar ...
said that he regularly listens to FIP and that he considers it to be the best radio in the world.
In December 2019, Radio France decided that the short news bulletins at 10 minutes before the hour would cease, and that the local studios in Bordeaux, Nantes, and Strasbourg would close in July 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has however delayed this change to December 2020.
Frequencies
FIP broadcasts in France as follows:
* Paris/Île-de-France: 105.1 MHz
* Bordeaux: 96.7 MHz/Arcachon: 96.5 MHz
* Montpellier: 99.7 MHz
* Nantes: 95.7 MHz/Saint-Nazaire: 97.2 MHz
* Strasbourg: 92.3 MHz
* Marseille: 90.9 MHz
* Rennes: 101.2 MHz
* Toulouse: 103.5 MHz
FIP also streams over th
Internet which gives FIP a global audience.
FIP's mediumwave broadcasts on 585 kHz in Paris (between 0800–1600
Central European Time
Central European Time (CET) is a standard time which is 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
The time offset from UTC can be written as UTC+01:00.
It is used in most parts of Europe and in a few North African countries.
CET i ...
from a transmitter in
Romainville
Romainville () is a Communes of France, commune in the Seine-Saint-Denis department and in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France.
Location
It is located from the Kilometre Zero, center of Paris.
History
On 24 July 1867, a part of the territory ...
) ceased on 3 January 2011.
FIP is available in Europe on free-to-air digital satellite on Atlantic Bird 3 at 5.0°West and
Astra at
19.2°East. The latter feed returned in January 2009 after a contractual break. FIP was also available from Hot Bird 7A at 13.0°East, but after a conflict between Radio France and CanalSat, distribution ceased on 1 July 2008.
FIP is available off the ASTRA satellite at 19.2°East frequency 12285 MHz symbol rate 29700 kS, polarity V. It can also be received in Western Australia, Tahiti and surrounding islands from Intelsat 701 at 180.0°East.
In the Netherlands, FIP is available via
Ziggo
Ziggo Holding B.V. () is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing digital cable television, Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers.
History
The company is the result of the merger between ...
cable (at 106.1 MHz) and channel 857 via Ziggo's digital receivers. Ziggo supplies cable services for over 40 percent of the households in the Netherlands.
The network
The different elements of the FIP network since its creation:
UK pirate relays
According to the
Brighton
Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London.
Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...
's ''
The Argus'' newspaper, a Brighton resident re-broadcast FIP for nearly ten years on two frequencies (91.0 and 98.5 MHz) in the FM band. The two signals, which were relays of FIP from satellite could be heard in many parts of Brighton. The two transmitters were operated to serve different parts of the city, one of them allegedly being in the Kempton area of the city. The station had proved very popular.
The two signals operated on frequencies originally used by FIP at Lille and Metz, which were unused in the Brighton area and caused no interference to existing national or local stations. Technical quality was very high and the
Radio Data System
Radio Data System (RDS) is a communications protocol standard for embedding small amounts of digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts. RDS standardizes several types of information transmitted, including time, station identificati ...
(RDS) identification was F_I_P with the two signals linked to ensure best reception on an RDS car radio. The program identification codes of the RDS appeared to be the same as those used on the real French transmitters.
The rebroadcasts broke UK broadcast rules enforced by UK telecom, radio and TV regulator
Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
. Although it is believed that Ofcom officials visited the address of the station operator and confiscated the equipment, thus taking the
pirate broadcasts off the air, the station could still be heard on one of the original frequencies, 91.0 MHz, throughout the city until 2012 and the UK relay operator decided to cease broadcasting FIP to Brighton due to the continued attention from Ofcom, the UK radio authority.
An appreciation society for fans of FIP, Vive la FIP, meets regularly in Brighton; some members even visited the Paris studios of FIP and were featured in an article in the French listings magazine ''
Télérama
''Télérama'' is a weekly French cultural and television magazine published in Paris, France. The name is a contraction of its earlier title: ''Télévision-Radio-Cinéma''. Fabienne Pascaud is currently managing editor. Ludovic Desautez is dep ...
'' in February 2007.
Slogans
* 1973–1995 : "La radio de toutes les musiques" (The radio of all music)
* 1995–2011 : "Respirez, vous êtes sur FIP" (Breathe, you are on FIP)
* 2006–2011 : "105.1% musique" (105.1% music) (for Paris)
* 2011–2012 : "FIP, 40 ans d'évasion" (FIP, 40 years of escape)
* 2015–2016 : "Des nouveaux rendez-vous" (Some new rendezvous)
* Since 2017 : "Vous n'êtes plus là, vous êtes sur FIP" (You're no longer there, you're on FIP)
References
;Notes on FIP Brighton
BBC Radio 4's ''You and Yours'' feature on FIP in BrightonFip Radio To Make A Comeback ''
The Argus'', 2 May 2007
Love FipThe website for FIP in Brighton and Hove.
External links
*
Web-based streaming audio player
Satellites carrying FIP.
{{coord missing, France
1971 establishments in France
Radio France
Radio stations established in 1971